But first! It must be a volcano! Welcome to the energetic and inventive poetry of Luis Humberto Valadez, April’s featured poet.

Note: View on larger screen to preserve artistic formatting.

 
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I am Energy as Soon as I Start Doing!
               (Inspired by Leticia, Sophomore English Major of Neijiang Normal University, PRC)

Are we the force that refuses to stop                            doing that which must be done for
                              the conversation of energy? 

                                                                           I think so!

                                               For the reason we start doing,                                         the
          expenditure of our ignition                   must be converted                              to units
          we both understand.     

Let’s start drawing a picture of a mountain!                                                          But first!
                                                               It must be a volcano!                              

The sun will make our skins darker,                             but,                      please do not worry,                              

                                                  please                                                             leave your umbrella.

                                                                       We are just doing what our nature is asking of us.

                          For the reason we start doing,                                         the expenditure of
          our ignition                      must be converted                              to units we both
          understand.     

I feel we are the force that refuses to stop.                               I want the conversation                                                                                                                                  of energy.
                                                                  To know

Are we together mountains?                                          Are we of the same volcano?

          I thank you for teaching me how not to waste                          the weeds in our
           field of strength                                         which will be fertilized
                                               by night soil.                                                                               

I am a stone pillar leaning towards                                              you walking in heels
                              tilling the land.            

          For the reason we start doing,                                           the expenditure of our
          ignition                              must be converted                              to units we both
          understand.     

                                                                             Can you check this on your phone?

 
~~~

 

Three Months In
Neijiang (2014)
 
Side A
 
No other thing is a square of concrete
adjacent to the way into a complex
containing people who often strike me
 
No other things are the tables for tennis
in front of or behind strewn about clothes
exalted in my eyes by a chainlink fence
 
No one else on the coach bus should feel
the space they are taking from a woman
bringing a bag of beef and potatoes
too small for my eyes to form a large meal from
to a landmass of people too many
for the mouth beneath them to describe as small
 
I believe the mucus under my nose
is a sign I am letting go of something
even if I do not know what it is

Side B
 
No other sensation is a city
teeming with a life in which you have no part
but to be asked why, where, if you are not
one of ours with bad fortune of fat, round face
eyes and hair that are unremarkable
 
Nothing is like knowing of eros and loss
in the lives of the people around you
served back and forth like a shuttlecock in play
on the street during slow business hours
in a game you were never taught in your schools
 
No good is begun from wanting badly
to pause the breath of your fellow passengers
wielding your undeniable nature
 
It is like requiring that the teacher
affix a colorful sticker against
each one of your suffocating desires
pardoning your runny speech
for the influence of oily local food
and paper too thin to absorb it all 

 
   
~~~

 
 

she took a picture with me
  

she let me speak to her in
sentences I practiced for hours          
sifted vigorously through her
points of reference     
then set them
as the foundation          
 for a home
in the desert   
 
she read my interpolations
played them as music we         
both could find the rhythm of
  
she took my eyes for  
                        much broader than anyone else had
asked me about my spectacles               
looked into my pupils before
            trying to look through the frames        
 
she came over to cook
though neither of us knew how         
held my hand covered in
            fingerless gloves        
put her scarf on me
 
she took the weight between us as    
a place for rest
expanded the measure of her reach   
stood on the tips of her toes
            to take a picture with me       

 
   
  
 ~~~
 
 

good lovers repatriate fires that have disbursed each other, he said
for Akilah Oliver  

i should have asked you to help me face my hips forward without strain. instead i asked for you to finish class early so I could get to my hummus and fritos. i’d beg your forgiveness, but you heard only men do that. would you lend me your car so i can get into the mountains? i’m working on being audible enough for you to hear me profess my desire for someone else to tell me where my boundaries are. i’m losing my ability to push behind social medium. i heard a loud mouth can help me laugh, but i’d be better to breathe through my nostrils.

hold my child, i said. i’ll pick him up when i retire from my position as a miscellaneous employee. make him hot dogs and eggs. teach him to slice his Corn King Franks pieces smaller with a fork. i only got him cause someone once let me in on a joke.

my breath is the pots i ate of almond cheese and vegan chili thinking they wouldn’t show above my waist. my scent is the shower i took in a dream so lucid i didn’t take one before your class. i promise i never tried to sell you what i served, even though you smoked heavily.

i need gloves for my extremities. i would take yours if they weren’t yours. my wrists would rather take the weight of my shoulders than distribute what makes them feel significant. i am wrecked in the hips from the times i approached you from the outer edges of my feet. if i wasn’t the same age as your son, i wonder how much sooner you would have stopped bobbing your head to my tune of be mine not anyone else’s. besides, i didn’t know how to recognize when someone wanted to touch me. still don’t. i apologize for my jealousy. you didn’t lust for me and my girth would have kept me from reaching you, anyway. it’s because of you i figured out that my language is filed under gets i ain’t got.

 

 

 

 

Luis Humberto Valadez

Luis Humberto Valadez is from Chicago Heights, IL, USA, with parents from Mexico. He is the author of “what i’m on” (2009, University of Arizona Press) and “Valid Lush” (2012, Plumberries Press). He is an educator focused on service to disenfranchised populations, formerly working in Chicago and currently working in China. His work as a poet is the work of trying to be a source for good in this life and trying to understand the nature of being. As such, whatever environment he is in will influence his work deeply.

 
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